Mindbond (33 page)

Roars of anger answered me. Anger, glaring in their faces along with a plain disappointment. They surged toward me. “Bah! Kill him,” the granite-colored one shouted. Clubs swung up.

But the blue leader, who stood nearest me, turned on them furiously. “We kill him when I say!” he thundered.

“When you say! We'll be here all day, waiting till you say!”

They quarreled and tussled, taking sides, their roars and rumblings echoing off the mountainpeaks, their blows and shovings shaking the rocks—I heard the name of Sakeema shouted in tones fit to make the mountains shudder. The rivals were bludgeoning each other, some of the other Cragsmen doing the same and the rest of them clustering around like so many gawking stones, gray, greenish, tan, rimrock red. Few of them fixed their hard eyes on me any longer. When their uproar had reached a hopeful height I sent Talu quietly forward—

A club came smashing down across my path, the slate-blue leader's glare met me, and within an eyeblink the commotion, which I had considered to be at its height, redoubled. By my mother's bones, but it must have been a precious thing they guarded! I had not thought they could come out of their quarrel so quickly to turn on me. One more breath and I would be dead—I could feel rage hot as blood in the air. But Talu, as terrified as I, reared high. Teetering on her hind legs, she somehow managed to turn in the narrow space between rocks, and at a plunging, panicky gallop she took me back the way we had come.

I was in nearly as much danger from her as I had been from the Cragsmen. I could not have stopped her if I had tried—and, mindful of wrathful enemies not far behind me, I did not try—but Talu's every wild leap threatened to throw me against a boulder, or smash my knee against one, or my head against a tree, or send us both crashing down when she snapped a leg between stones. Her hooves slipped and scrabbled on dizzying slopes—this was terrain that scarcely should have been ridden at a slow walk! I held onto her by clinging to her mane until she took a man-tall drop at a leap, but then I considered that I had had enough. Moreover, there was a thought in me that I did not wish to be carried too far from the place the Cragsmen so fervidly guarded. So I swung down by her neck and took my chances with a landing on hard rock. Then I lay, the breath knocked out of me, and watched her plunge crazily away, and took accounting of my bodily harm. Bruises, nothing worse.

Behind me, out of sight but not yet out of tongueshot, I heard the noise of the Cragsmen, who were quarreling still. I lay where I was until their uproar had quieted, that and my ragged breathing and the thumping of my heart. Talu had careered out of sight and hearing. I rose cautiously and walked away from the direction she had gone, back toward the Cragsmen but to one side of them.

It was not hard for a Red Hart hunter on foot to elude Cragsmen. I stalked softly past them, and they knew nothing of it. I dare say they thought I was yet on Talu, blundering back up the mountain. Few travelers are foolish enough to let themselves be separated from horse and gear. But being a fool, and afoot, I found the many boulders more to my liking than I had when they threatened to break my neck. They gave me good cover as I stalked, and though the Cragsmen ceased their scuffling and moved back to lines of guard once again, I eluded them easily enough. I crept between rocks until I had left them behind, and then I softly walked, looking, searching. Even though I did not know for what.

But there was no doubt in me once I saw it.

Boulders ended suddenly, spearpines thinned, sky showed. Underfoot lay a smooth, flat place made of many small stones—I noted that later, for at the time my seeing was all taken up by the crag. An odd sort of tall, jagged crag, very steep, very aspiring, loomed ahead. And in its side opened a most peculiar cave. As I drew nearer, step by slow, cautious step, I noticed that the rock wall around the entry was all networked with small lines, like cracks—they were cracks. With a shock I realized that the crag was no crag, nor the cave a cave.

Name of the god, it was a place made by the long-ago kings whose powers I scarcely understood, a place left from time lost in time.

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Glossary

afterlings: followers, usually on foot.

afterwit: hindsight.

amaranth: a healing flower, disappeared when Sakeema was killed.

awk: leftward.

blackstone: obsidian.

brownsheen: copper-colored.

brume: dense, gray fog.

cachalot: sperm whale.

carrageen: a dark purplish seaweed.

chough: a small, insolent crow.

comity: innate courtesy.

craking rail: a short-billed landrail of drab plumage, shy habits, and excruciating vocal abilities.

dreamwit: a visionary person, a mystic.

dryland: the opposite of ocean. Refers to any land above water, not necessarily arid.

dulse: an edible seaweed.

erne: a sea eagle.

eye of sky: the dispassionate gaze of the nameless god.

fire true: true enough to be sworn to by putting one's hand in fire.

fogwater: condensation.

fry: recently hatched salmon just emerging from the gravel, the length of the first joint of a man's index finger.

fulmar: a stiff-winged, gliding seabird.

gair fowl: the great auk, a sort of northern penguin.

gannet: a large, white seabird.

glimmerstones: agates.

graymaw: a shark.

graysheen: silver-colored.

greendeep: ocean.

grilse: salmon returning from the sea to their native river; “summer salmon.”

gudgeon: a rather stupid-looking freshwater fish.

gutknot: navel.

highmountain: alpine (as, highmountain meadow).

indeeps: penetralia.

inwit: instinct.

jannock: unleavened oatmeal bread.

king: a tribal ruler of either sex.

kittiwake: a small, short-legged, gentle-faced gull.

lappet: a breechclout.

lovelocks: curling tendrils of hair.

merkin: a woman's pubic hair.

moonstuff: silver.

moon-mad: temporarily passionate or out of control, with emotions running high, as if influenced, like tides, by the phase of the moon.

nagsback: a shallow mountain pass.

noggin's worth: a little.

orichalc: a hard, golden bronze.

parr: young salmon still in the brown freshwater stage.

peal: salmon returning from the sea to their native river, turning from silver to red.

pickthank: a flatterer.

rampick: a tree whose top is dead or broken off by wind.

roughlands: the shadowlands.

scantling: a toddler, a very young specimen of whatever species.

scarrow: high, thin cloud.

scarrow-fog: a thin haze high in the sky that lets the sun show as a white spot.

scooning: skipping over the surface of water as a flat stone does when properly thrown.

shadowlands: the arid high plains beyond the mountains, the steppes or shortgrass prairie.

slowcome: a slow-witted person or one who is slow to act, sometimes with a sexual connotation.

smellfungus: a grumbler.

smolt: salmon in the final freshwater stage, turning from brown to silver.

smurr: drizzle.

snow mote: snowflake.

stone-boiled: cooked in liquid into which hot stones are dropped to heat it.

stoup's worth: a lot.

sunstuff: gold.

swordmaster: maker, namer, and wielder of his or her sword.

sylkies: undersea folk who can take the form of humans or seals.

thunder cones: volcanoes.

tongueshot: the distance a voice will carry.

troating: bleating, as of a deer in rut.

tumblestone: a rock washed smooth by the action of water.

wanhope: a person who continues to hope against all common sense.

whimbrel: a brown wading bird, related to dowitchers, godwits, curlews, willets, and snipe.

whurr: to burst from cover with a loud flapping of wings, as a partridge or a grouse.

witch wind: hot wind that blows down from the landward side of mountains.

About the Author

Nancy Springer is the award-winning author of more than fifty books, including the Enola Holmes and Rowan Hood series and a plethora of novels for all ages, spanning fantasy, mystery, magic realism, and more. She received the James Tiptree, Jr. Award for
Larque on the Wing
and the Edgar Award for her juvenile mysteries
Toughing It
and
Looking for Jamie Bridger
, and she has been nominated for numerous other honors. Springer currently lives in the Florida Panhandle, where she rescues feral cats and enjoys the vibrant wildlife of the wetlands.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1987 by Nancy Springer

Cover design by Drew Padrutt

ISBN: 978-1-4532-4850-8

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

SEA KING TRILOGY

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